Batman reboot moves ahead of Justice League?

Warner Bros might just have pushed a Batman reboot ahead of the Justice League movie on its production slate...

Given the (unconfirmed) news that broke last week surrounding Warner Bros' planned Justice League movie, specifically that the screenplay from Will Beall had been scrapped and it was basically back to square one, few are now expecting Warner Bros to have the film ready for summer 2015. Without a script, Warner Bros can't lure in a good director, and the clock is ticking on getting such an important film for the studio into production.

The problem for Warner Bros is that if the Justice League movie is now rushed, and then doesn't work, the DC cinematic universe is in deep trouble. This is a project that's supposed to close the gap on the Marvel movies, not lengthen it, as the muddled Green Lantern seemed to do.

Batman On Film, a site whose sources have good tentacles on these matters, now reports that Warner Bros may just have moved a reboot of Batman ahead of Justice League on its schedule. Furthermore, if it can make a success out of Man Of Steel, and can get working on a full trilogy of Superman films as a result, then Warner Bros' need to press ahead with a new Batman film quickly will be relaxed. That might mean the caped crusader isn't seen on the big screen again until 2019. That said, if Man Of Steel bombs (which seems unlikely), Warner Bros may have to send for Batman sooner.

That said, the move back towards re-introducing Batman in a solo, standalone project seems a wise one, and leaving several years between the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy and a new take on the character also seems a good plan.

As for Justice League? There's a growing suspicion - and again, nothing remotely formal on this has come out of Warner Bros - that the film will be scrapped, certainly in its current form. At the very least, unless Warner Bros can pull together a strong screenplay for the project in the next few months, it's got little to no chance of arriving in the summer of 2015. We'll keep you posted...